Technical Field
Exemplary embodiments of the present disclosure relate to a drying device and an inkjet printer system including the drying device.
Background Art
In a printer employing a liquid droplet discharge method such as an inkjet printer, an image is fixed onto a recording medium with ink due to evaporation of a solvent component of the ink that permeates the recording medium. In particular, as the permeation of the ink increases, the image is more securely fixed. In recent years, demands for printing on recording media such as coated paper have been increased due to a request for finer image formation.
Permeation of ink into the coated paper with a coated surface is slower than the permeation of ink into a normal sheet, so that the degree of fixation of the image onto the coated paper tends to decrease. Thus, coated paper having better permeability has been developed, but which in turn narrows options for the type of sheets usable, and therefore is not accepted by users.
Further, oily ink and ultra-violet curing ink with lower permeation but higher fixing property are known. Both inks may contain substrates harmful to humans. As a result, special environmental and health precautions are required.
When the image is fixed on the regular and not-luxurious coated paper with aqueous ink, heat to eliminate solvent medium included in the aqueous ink needs to be applied. On the other hand, when using normal paper other than the coated paper, so much heat is not necessary because the aqueous ink effectively permeates the normal paper. When a heater to generate/supply the heat necessarily to be applied to the coated paper is provided, the heat becomes excessive for normal paper. In addition, an extra appliance is needed to supply power to the heater.
As a result, a system in which a drying device to apply heat to the recording medium is disposed downstream of the image forming section of the inkjet printer has been invented. In this system, the inkjet printer retains the capability to heat the coated paper during conveyance to such a degree that the image is not taken by a roller that contacts the image surface on both sides, and the drying device retains capability to heat the image even on other types of sheets for output commercially available in the future.